Hadley+Maxwell
(Find us at the kitchen door) at unitednationsplaza
unitednationsplaza (the unp) is an experimental exhibition/educational institution located in former East Berlin. Nestled in the shadows of romantic plattenbau apartments, the unp building is a small, square box that sits at the rear of a big-box food retailer. One passes by a dumpster to enter through an unassuming metal door. The facilities are modest, almost Spartan: a seminar room, a kitchen, a toilette, an office upstairs, and a bar in the basement. The seminar room features an all-white interior with simply constructed, and remarkably uncomfortable, white cubes for seating that can be reconfigured into various formats from bleachers to barricades. There is a “beamer,” with an underwhelming computer-speaker system for powerpoint and video presentations, panel discussions, and soft-voiced lecturers.1
The unp rises from the ashes of the implosion of Manifesta 6, famous for the legal arguments that have ensued since its cancellation.2 The proposed program for Manifesta 6 was to use an educational model. An examination of Anton Vidokle’s “Exhibition as School in a Divided City”3 reveals his research of other experimental arts institutions, with a particular interest in George Maciunas’ New Marlboro Centre for Arts.4 The site for Manifesta 6 was no mere retreat into the comfort of a pastoral campus, but was to be situated within the politically charged city of Nicosia, Cyprus, at a crucial moment in its conflicted history. With this in mind, Manifesta 6 was a proposal to create a space for new social and political possibilities of artistic production by demanding a certain investment of time from its participants, thus possibly avoiding the typical pattern of artists who drop in and take off from many large-scale international exhibitions. In its conflation of politics and art, discourse, and practice, the unp seems to be an attempt to recover some of the work put into Manifesta 6.
In light of the original gesture that initiated the unp, and in the spirit of what we have come to enjoy as the gift of the unitednationsplaza (poetically demonstrated by the bold urgency of crushing together three overloaded and strangely fashionable words), we will consider the unp here as an experiment with the form and function of an exhibition as school.5
Attention! What you see here is only an excerpt of a longer article. The full text appears in printed copies of the magazine. To purchase the issue of Fillip in which this article appears, please visit one of our many retailers worldwide, or contact us directly. You can also purchase the full text of this article for $2cdn via Paypal. A link to the full article will be emailed within 24 hours of your received payment.
About this Article
(Find us at the kitchen door) at unitednationsplaza was first published in Fillip 6 in Summer 2007. For more articles from this issue, see the Table of Contents.
Hadley+Maxwell are Canadian artists in residence at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin.
Notes
The views expressed in Fillip are not necessarily those of the editorial board or the Projectile Publishing Society.
All content appearing on this website is copyright to the authors, artists, editors, and the Projectile Publishing Society, or is published with the permission of the copyright holders. No part of this site may be reproduced, copied, or transmitted in any form or by any means without express written permission.
